SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) -
President Bush (news - web sites) said on Sunday he would sign landmark campaign finance reform legislation with only a slight hesitation, reflecting his ongoing concerns about the measure.
"I won't hesitate" signing it, Bush said at a joint news conference with Salvadoran President Francisco Flores as the president wrapped up a four-day trip to Latin America. "It will probably take about three seconds to get to the W, I may hesitate on the period, and then rip through the Bush."
The legislation to reduce the influence of money in politics won final congressional approval last week, and Bush has pledged to sign it soon.
The bill would ban unlimited contributions known as "soft money" to national political parties, limit such donations to state and local parties and restrict broadcast ads by outside groups shortly before elections.
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose investigation of Bill Clinton's sex life resulted in the president's impeachment in 1998, is to lead a legal challenge that will seek to knock down most of the measure as unconstitutional.
Bush said he felt the campaign bill did not fully address the need to require identification of who is funding so-called independent groups that introduce "scurrilous, untrue" television advertisements in the last days of a campaign, as he said happened to him in his 2000 presidential campaign.
"I've always thought that people who pump money into the political system, we ought to know who they are," he said.
Bush said that nonetheless the "bill is a better bill than the current system," but that some parts of it might not stand up to a court challenge.